


Powerless

by janetcarter



Category: The Order (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:29:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/pseuds/janetcarter
Summary: The reason Vera performed the Fors Factorum.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Powerless

**Author's Note:**

> This story features descriptions of rape and focuses on its trauma. Please heed the warnings accordingly.

Vera froze. How could she do anything else? After all, this couldn’t be happening, could it? 

But it was. The Councilor, she hadn’t even gotten his name, entered her, pinning her wrists down against the altar like a sacrificial lamb. She focused on the sounds of the party outside - the clinking glasses, Edward’s charismatic voice echoing across the hall… If he didn’t know she was missing, no one was going to save her. 

The thrusts continued to rock her body. His hands kept her own apart, kept her nails from digging into her palms to draw blood. Her teeth cut into her cheek and she could taste the metal mixed in with the aftertaste of alcohol but she couldn’t find her voice to say the words. All she could do was stare at the ceiling, candle flames distorted by the way her body involuntarily jerked. 

His grunts fell into a harsh rhythm, increasing before he released. By the time her teary eyes refocused, he was gone. 

Breath shaky, she clambered off the altar and limped in the opposite direction of the gathering, finally ending up in an old bathroom with a mirror pinned to stone. 

Numb and hazy, she hardly recognized herself in the mirror. She’d been so excited for this event, but looking at her torn, dirty dress… she felt so stupid. She was at Belgrave on a scholarship. She had used every ounce of her savings to buy something pretty to wear at her first real party with the higher ups in the Order. She was rising through the ranks fast, faster than some people were comfortable with. 

A rough piece of paper towel scratched at her smudged makeup and, before she knew it, she’d slipped out of the building. 

There had been whispers of the Fors Factorum even at her current rank: an incantation that did away with the tedious need for sacrifice. If she could’ve just said something, uttered the spells on the tip of her tongue, this would not have happened. She would not have shattered for the second time in her life when she had hardly pieced herself back together after the first.

So in the wreckage of nightmares and tears and an anxiety that shot through her every time she so much as left her dorm, she dredged up just enough strength to keep going. The assault might have happened in part because her ambition seeded insecurity in those she would surpass, tempting her to leave the Order and forget about magic altogether in her darkest moments. But she needed to keep going.

She needed to make sure she would _ never _ be that powerless  _ ever  _ again. 


End file.
